Chameleon 1.1: more widgets, better widgets, and stock widgets

The Chameleon smart launcher for Android is one of our favorite projects currently in development. We like how it tries to redefine the home screen, and turn it into a smart, interactive dashboard that displays all the information you need at a glance.

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When Chameleon version 1 hit Google Play a couple of weeks ago, some users complained about the limited selection of widgets. That is set to change though. Teknision, the developer of the project, has been working hard to create more widgets, but also to make available widgets created by the community and even stock Android widgets.

That is right, Chameleon 1.1 will support regular Android app widgets, in spite of their drawbacks, which, according to Teknision, are “extremely limited interactivity and poor adaptive layout”. We think this move will open up Chameleon and make it more flexible, and perhaps convince more people to try it out.

Teknision has also been working to create additional widgets; two new ones, Google+ and Calendar, are now available, and if you have the launcher installed you should see a notification that they have been added. In case you don’t see the notification, you might want to force close the app and restart it.

The Google+ widget works within the constraints of Google’s API, which is quite limited, but besides that, it has all the features you might want. For now, the Calendar widget only works with Google Calendar, but the team promises that compatibility with local calendars is coming soon.

An upcoming Widget Catalog will contain community creations, developed using the Chameleon SDK. It’s good to hear that people are interested in developing for Chameleon, and hopefully this trend will only grow. Teknision has promised to support third-party developers, by updating the SDK and providing documentation.